-- Bertrand Russell, 1932 http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
I have actually done all the things you list living in Brooklyn, NY over the past seven years. But it hasn't come easy. I grew the vegetables at a community garden, which took years for me to get into. I had to work on the motorcycle in the alley way of my building, which due to recent crime increases in the area is now untenable. I cook and cure my own meats on occasion but due to the high costs associated with getting good meat, the tiny kitchen I have to work with, and the vegan next-door neighbors who roll their eyes at me any time they smell a steak cooking, I obviously don't do it as much as I'd like.
The value of the city for me, as someone who both grew up here and then returned after school to pursue work, has been all of the metropolitan values: living so near so many interesting, distinct, and different kinds of people. I work in tech and media but I really tend to enjoy the company of those who work in other fields - I enjoyed the diversity of interests, talents, and values here in NYC. But every place has a point where things become too oppressive and expensive to yield any further cultural benefits - and we clearly hit that mark here even before quarantine.
Now, with quarantine in effect, the one thing I really cherished and held onto over the years - being near people - has become a major detractor living in NYC. Without a magnificent amount of reversals, I will be looking to buy property in a state where I am not paying an entire paycheck in taxes to my city government.
If I worked at my job less, I'd have more time for these productive activities and I certainly wouldn't pine away searching for "meaning" in my day job, that's for sure.
That doesn't make those activities consumerist though.
Perhaps the massive jump in active leisure will suddenly manifest but so far no such thing has come to be.
Have you tried to buy exercise equipment lately? What about hiking backpacks? Have you been to Lowe's? Have you heard that there are protests happening across the country?
It seems to me like there has been a massive jump in active leisure.
If I'm one of those at risk people, my "active" activities are going to lean to the safer options I can find like walking or jogging. No mountain climbing, kayaking, skiing, and so forth.
I explained this to my parents who have a few existing health conditions that have a high correlation with COVID mortality rates based on the data I've seen. They don't need to go into the hospital for a cut or injured finger if they can avoid the accident in the first place. Obviously if a real emergency arrives you need to weigh the risks of contracting COVID vs the emergency (an admittedly nearly impossible task) but you should try to minimize risks for the time being where you can to try and avoid that situation completely.
Basically you need to be a little more risk averse than you may normally be under the assumption a minor injury is manageable if you're potentially susceptible to COVID right now.
It seems to have receded already though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption
I really don’t think working a 40-hour a week job is the hold up here.
It makes it easy to experience perfection without doing anything. You can feel the perfect romance of beautiful people, and take a perfect vacation - without actively doing anything yourself.
But that raises your expectations for everything. So you don't do anything yourself anymore, you just consume.
That, combined with a meaningless work, or rather a busyness fetish (dont want to be seen as lazy even though you're not productive), creates the mordern life.
No, thank you. I take imperfection and less neuroticism (and less work hours) any day over this.
You have a fundamentally different view of leisure time than what Bertrand Russel is talking about. In his view, leisure is something in which one has to be actively engaged in. Modern television, however, outsources much of this: laugh tracks are a prime example, but another example would be the BBC's Sherlock series which doesn't make it possible for the viewer to figure out "who done it", it only has Sherlock swoop in and connect dots that were never shown.
As I said, I don’t think the issue is one of time. It’s more that there is a massive industrial complex pushing you to consume, click, engage, etc., while cultural movements that encourage creating things and active engagement are niche at best.
But the quote never mentioned insufficient time, only insufficient energy.
> This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work;
This lack of energy makes people passively consume, e.g. listen to the radio (as the quote mentions), or watch TV (as you mention). Rather it's the notion that people's energy's are so drained from (often seemingly meaningless) work, that they have no desire to do anything but just consume idly. I don't know if that's true or not, but I personally do feel it is. When I'm doing 40-60 hour workweeks, I've got no desire to do anything that isn't largely passive. Whereas when I worked 20 hours at most, I was always busy teaching myself something or building something.
I've always felt like forty hours is less than ideal, but I don't see the connection with meaninglessness. During the period in my life when I had an unchallenging job[1], I found myself ravenous for active mental work after-hours: I'd learn new things in my field, read econ papers constantly[2], and it was probably the most productive adult period of my music-learning life. Now that I have an intense, very intellectually challenging job, I understand for the first time in my life why people might want to watch TV, especially at the regularity that most do it.
[1] I wouldn't describe it as meaningless, but it wasn't intellectually challenging at all
[2] I have a minor in econ, so enough to understand many papers at a relatively superficial level
I realize this is a little off-topic, but this is something that the original Holmes did as well. Almost every story was solved because Holmes had already spent time "off-camera" doing things, or already happened to know about obscure poisons, etc. It all feels very deus-ex-machina.
It wasn't until the Agatha Christie era when it became customary for mysteries to show all of the clues that the Detective encounters to be also given to the Reader, so that the reader can try to figure it out before the detective exposes things.
from the previous comment